TMZ was informed by Simpson’s lawyer that he passed away in Las Vegas on Wednesday night. Simpson battled cancer, according to a note released on his official X account, which was once Twitter, on Thursday.
“He was surrounded by his children and grandchildren,” the statement said.
Through sports and the entertainment industry, Simpson amassed wealth, fame, and admiration; but, the knife killings of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles in June 1994 permanently altered his legacy.
Witnessing his arrest during a well-known slow-speed pursuit on live television signaled the sports hero’s dramatic decline in popularity.
Whether he was playing college football for the dominant University of Southern California as a star tailback in the late 1960s, running through airports as a rental car salesman in the late 1970s, or marrying a blonde and blue-eyed high school homecoming queen in the 1980s, he had the appearance of transcending racial boundaries.
“I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,” he liked to tell friends.
His “trial of the century” captured the attention of the public on live television. Discussions on racism, gender, domestic abuse, celebrity justice, and police misconduct were triggered by his case.
In 1995, a jury in a criminal court ruled him not guilty of murder; but, in 1997, a jury in a civil trial declared him responsible for the murders and mandated that he give $33.5 million to the families of Brown and Goldman.
Ten years later, still dogged by the California wrongful death ruling, Simpson led a group of five strangers into a Las Vegas hotel room altercation with two sports memorabilia sellers. Simpson was with two armed men. Simpson was found guilty by a jury of armed robbery and other offenses.
He was incarcerated for nine years, including one year as a gym janitor, in a remote jail in northern Nevada. He was sixty-one years old. When he was freed on parole in October 2017, he showed no remorse. He repeatedly insisted to the parole board that he was merely attempting to reclaim family heirlooms and sports memorabilia that had been taken from him following his criminal prosecution in Los Angeles.
“I’ve basically spent a conflict-free life, you know,” Simpson, whose parole ended in late 2021, said.
Simpson’s public appeal never subsided. Many argued if his acquittal in Los Angeles had resulted in punishment for him in Las Vegas. A five-part ESPN documentary and an FX miniseries both focused on him in 2016.
After the public’s outcry twelve years later, Rupert Murdoch withdrew the News Corp-owned HarperCollins book that Simpson was going to write, in which he would have given his fictitious version of the killings. “If I Did It” was supposed to be the title.
The book was taken over by Goldman’s family, who are still tenaciously pursuing the multimillion-dollar wrongful death claim. The book was retitled, “If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer.”
“It’s all blood money, and unfortunately I had to join the jackals,” Simpson told The Associated Press at the time. He collected $880,000 in advance money for the book, paid through a third party.
“It helped me get out of debt and secure my homestead,” he said.
Less than two months after losing the rights to the book, Simpson was jailed in Las Vegas.
Simpson spent nine of his eleven NFL seasons with the Buffalo Bills, where he played behind “The Electric Company,” an offensive line that earned him the nickname “The Juice.” In his career, he ran for 11,236 yards, scored 76 touchdowns, won four NFL running titles, and was a member of five Pro Bowls. As the first running back to exceed the 2,000-yard rushing mark, he had his greatest season in 1973, rushing for 2,003 yards.
“I was part of the history of the game,” he said years later, recalling that season. “If I did nothing else in my life, I’d made my mark.”
Simpson, of course, achieved other fame.
Simpson was informed that the suit would be in the hotel room in Las Vegas, but it turned out that it wasn’t. The expertly fitted tan suit he wore when he was found not guilty of murder was one of the artifacts of his trial that was eventually donated and put on display at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.
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